Returned
by Alice Is My Sister
Summary: This is the untold story of Stefan's experience of Elena's parent's death and the summer spent watching the girl that looked like Katherine.


Returned

It's been a while since I've written anything but an English essay, so please be kind to me. I am open to any suggestions about what you think I should do with the story, PLEASE review! :D

I do not own Vampire Dairies.

**Stephens Point of View**

Mystic Falls has always been my home, every few years I come here to see my family, to see my home, to walk the town and remember the past. I haven't been home in twelve years, and just like the last hundred and forty-five years, things change slowly in Mystic Falls. I was walking along the edge of the woods near Wickery Bridge while it started to drizzle looking for dinner, I had just left the boarding House. Zack had said some high school kids were throwing a party near the old cemetery, so I would make sure to stay clear of them; humans weren't the best thing to be around when I allowed the darkest parts of me to come to the front and consume me while I hunted.

A movement deep in the woods caught my attention, a deer; I stiffened and then sprung allowing the urge for blood to overcome my disgust for killing. Even the death of a deer made me hate what I was, and who I was when I allowed the need for blood to rule me. I had spent decades training myself to have self control, but that urge to kill an innocent was always there, Lexi had spend decades working with me, but even though I was immortal I was still human. Sometimes the temptation was too much, I would relapse and there Lexi would be to pull me off the edge and force me to feel again. It has been more than sixty years since I've had human blood, but every day is a struggle.

I sighed and allowed the empty deer to fall to my feet. I wasn't full but the demon in me was calm, although not satisfied. I turned back towards the road to head back home. The rain had picked up and it was now poring, I could hear a car zooming along the road heading toward the bridge, although I was a half mile from the road, I could hear every word that was spoken inside the car.

"Is Aunt Jenna really mad that I missed family night?" a familiar voice said. Although I couldn't place it, I knew I had heard that voice before though I had never heard a tone of concern for others spoken with that voice.

"She is just mad you skipped playing Pictionary with us to go a bond fire with your boyfriend." a man spoke, from a different position in the car, the front seat.

"Speaking of your boyfriend," a women interjects, also sitting in the front seat, "Elena, what are you going to do about Matt?"

"I don't know mom. I know what I should do, Bonnie and you are right if I don't love him I shouldn't lead him on, I should set him free. But he's one of my best friends I don't want to wreck that part of our relationship, and I don't want to hurt him. But when he talks about college, and marriage and having kids, he scares me. And I'm sixteen; marriage and kids are things I should think about as they come." That voice was still so familiar, I still couldn't place it, I know I had never heard it with these ears, which meant that it was spoken to me before I was a vampire, and that was impossible for the teen in the back seat.

"Those choices are things that you have years to figure that out, you're allowed to take changes and break hearts. Elena you have to do what's best for you, and if it's the right thing Matt's heart will heal. Not everyone finds their soul mate in high school." the man said.

"You guys did." Elena responded

"We were lucky." The women spoke, "and honey be careful remember the bridge gets slippery when wet." The women statement directed at her husband.

"I haven't forgotten, I can't wait until the restoration project for this thing is underway, as of right now it's not very safe." The man said as I heard him hit the brakes as the tires transition from the asphalt to the concrete of the bridge.

I turned to walk in the opposite direction from the one the car with the family was heading. They didn't know I was there, now almost a mile away from them, but I felt like I was intruding none the less. I decided to speed my normal human walk in to a more comfortable vampire run, one that would get me home faster.

As my speed accelerated I heard a bump as the car must have hit a pot hole in the bridge, then the tries squealed on the bridge as the man hit the brakes trying to regain control of the car. The sound of one high piercing scream and two gasps as the tires of the car locked and the ghastly sound of the car smashing into the edge of the bridge and into the depth of the water below. I skidded to a stop and listened, trying to make sure of the sounds I had heard. Then the sound of the splashes and the gargles of the car filling out with water hit my ears.

I sprung into a full speed, moving as fast as I could toward the doomed family. I may not be the one that caused their deaths but if I didn't save them their blood would be one my hands. I spotted the bridge I forced the muscles in my legs to propel me into a jump that had me leaping over two hundred feet from the forest into the river's depths. I heard the struggle of two people as I entered the water, one in the front seat banging against the window of the full car trying to break the glass and one in the back seat stirring the water around her. I pushed myself forward faster as I heard the air being expelled form their lungs and being replaced with water, the heart in the back seat raced fighting, struggling to continue.

There were only two heart beats coming from the car, meaning one of the girl's parents had already died. I spotted the car that had already settled at the bottom, and saw that the girl in the back had dark long hair and she had taken the hand of her father, who was in the driver's seat, looking like she was saying goodbye, then released it as her heart shuttered to a stop. Now only one heart beat came from the car, it was weak and fading. I reach the driver door about to grab the handle as he looked through the window at me. I was going to rip the door off the frame of the car as he shook his head telling me not to save him and pointed back to his daughter. I looked over his shoulder and only saw thick dark hair that shielded a face. He wanted me to save his child first, what an incredible selfless act.

I moved to her door and grabbed the handle to rip it door ajar, when the water in the car shifted and the face behind the hair was reveled. I froze, unmovable, as I stared at the face that haunted my nightmares that turned me into this monster. How was it possible? She was dead, I watch her being drug into a carriage that had carried her to her death. This couldn't be, she wasn't real, she couldn't be. And yet there she sat dead in the back seat of a car.

_Katharine…_


End file.
